Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma...Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to...
Transcript of Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma...Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to...
By Leslie To and Caitlin Halpert
Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma
How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
2Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
ContentsIntro 3
How to reconcile franchise and eCommerce goals and tracking 4
Franchises 4
Ecommerce 5
How to reach those goals with paid search 6
Franchises 6
Ecommerce 7
How to reach those goals with SEO 8
Franchises 8
Ecommerce 9
Conclusion 11
About the Authors 12
About 3Q 13
3Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
IntroductionLet’s get started.If you are a multi-location business with an ecommerce component,
you know this dilemma well: how do you optimize the online
experience for both eCommerce sales and local foot traffic? When
franchises have unique and independent goals, this dilemma becomes
especially thorny.
At 3Q Digital, we faced this challenge managing SEO and paid search
for Relax The Back, a chain of retail stores specializing in
back-support products, with over 90 locations in the United States and
Canada. Relax The Back sells directly to customers online with their
eCommerce website but also supports independently owned franchise
locations that earn revenue only from in-store sales. The company
sells products ranging from Tempur-Pedic mattresses and Inada
massage chairs to hand-held massagers and ergonomic
monitor stands. Our campaigns encompass both the corporate
eCommerce site and individual franchises, each with their own goals
and targets.
In this whitepaper, we’ll walk you through how we helped establish
goals for both eCommerce and franchise stores, how we structured
paid search campaigns to reach those goals, and how we leveraged
usability studies and content strategies to fine-tune SEO for both
eCommerce and local efforts.
4Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
How to Reconcile Franchise and eCommerce Goals and Tracking
These values, of course, are not numerically perfect, but using
proxies allowed us to determine directional tactics – for instance,
which keywords to target, which offers work best in ad copy, which
sitelinks are most effective, etc.
Once the proxies and values were established, and using both historic
and predicted conversion rates, we backed into traffic goals.
For SEO, we’ll show how these franchise goals were met with a
combination of revamped site structure and navigation and updated
content; for paid search, we’ll show how we set up campaigns to make
sure the eCommerce site and goals didn’t cannibalize conversions
from franchise spend.
FRANCHISESWhen we took over management of Relax The Back, most digital
marketing resources were going to eCommerce rather than to
franchise sites. The company had a single account attempting to drive
local foot traffic, but no measurements were in place, and the vast
majority of spend was budgeted for eCommerce campaigns. Several
individual franchises were running paid search through independent
small-business vendors.
Franchise account management presented a couple of major
challenges: how to translate foot traffic (non-digital events) into
measurable digital data; and how to unify management of local
franchise accounts to leverage learnings and best practices across
those accounts.
We began by determining which on-site actions we could use as
proxies for foot traffic. These included hovering over the map, getting
directions, making phone calls, placing catalog requests, and sign-ups
for the brand newsletter. Because we don’t have the data to
differentiate, each event is assigned the same value.
5Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
ECOMMERCEThe main challenge with eCommerce was how to maintain (or
improve) profitability and conversions while funneling franchise
resources to franchise performance.
To achieve this, we had to first lock in on an ROAS (return on ad spend)
goal that would preserve profitability for the company while allowing
enough traffic to increase sales volume. Our original blended (brand
and non-brand) ROAS goal was too low to be profitable, but our
adjusted blended goal was too high to allow for the level of traffic that
would preserve revenue and sales.
Ultimately, we split out the non-brand ROAS goal, with the blended
goal almost twice as high as the non-brand goal. This allowed us to
allocate plenty of budget where we could anticipate profitable
conversion levels (brand) while setting aside spend for increased
revenue and awareness (non-brand) at slightly lower profitability with
the goal of garnering more customers for Relax The Back.
ROAS, of course, is not applicable to SEO. The eCommerce SEO goal
was linear: drive more revenue.
6Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
How to Reach Those Goals with Paid Search
Within the first year, our franchise accounts saw a 98% improvement
in search CTR, and our franchise spend generated 88% less revenue
for eCommerce – meaning that we had succeeded in directing
franchise spend to the franchise sales funnels.
FRANCHISESOur big challenge with franchises was to ensure that franchise spend
contributed as directly as possible to franchise sales (and not
ecommerce sales). To accomplish this, we split out an eCommerce
paid search account (as mentioned above) and created two other
accounts:
1. National Branding – we used the Google Display Network to develop nation-wide awareness and ultimately drive in-store sales across all franchises.
2. Franchise – we created hyper-local paid search accounts funded by each brick-and-mortar location to drive in-store foot traffic by targeting higher-ticket products and pain-relief terms.
Within those campaigns, we tracked the proxy conversions noted
above (hovering over the map, getting directions, making phone calls,
placing catalog requests, and sign-ups for the brand newsletter).
7Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
ECOMMERCEOnce we established goals of ROAS and revenue, we took a hard look
at the types of products more likely to sell online vs. in store.
It’s generally true that higher-ticket items will be easier to sell in a
store, with the human upselling element in play. This was especially
true with Relax The Back, whose main selling point is that their
salespeople are trained to provide custom back and neck pain
solutions, which creates an unparalleled experience for customers
who come into the store.
For eCommerce, this buying behavior produced a disadvantage,
particularly for products like mattresses. Relax The Back sells only
expensive Tempurpedic mattresses, while competitors offer both
Tempurpedic and cheaper alternatives. Relax The Back’s online
experience does not provide the customized in-person expertise that
the franchises do, and because online shoppers are generally more
price-sensitive, Relax The Back has a difficult time competing for
mattress-based keywords.
When we dove into the data, we discovered that lower-priced items
produced revenue far more reliably for eCommerce and allocated
spend accordingly. We were also able to add Product Listing Ads
(PLAs) to their account to get increased visibility in an ad format they’d
not previously tested. We also moved products with poor eCommerce
ROAS to our National Branding campaigns to test results nationally; if
the results were good, we built those products into the franchise
accounts. This increased the odds of foot traffic – and profitable
upsells – for specific high-priced products at the franchise level, and it
cut back on poor eCommerce spend.
Year over year, our eCommerce ROAS improved by 25%.
8Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
How to Reach those Goals with SEONew microsite design with expanded content:
FRANCHISESFor franchises, the SEO goal was straightforward: drive higher
volumes of visitors to local (franchise) microsites, which in turn would
drive more local foot traffic (again, measured through on-site proxy
actions).
To do this, we moved the existing local microsites away from a
single-URL iFrame structure and created static URLs for all
subdirectories with expanded local content. This gave search engines
and users more geo-specific options to enter the site. The new
microsites mirrored the look and feel of the new ecommerce site
(more on that below), creating a cohesive user experience.
Old microsite design:
9Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
Old ecommerce site design:The results were dramatic: local traffic grew 59% because of the im-
proved structure and content, and the traffic was also more engaged
thanks to features like location map and hours and more relevant
content. As a result, local proxy conversions saw 89% growth.
ECOMMERCEGiven the mandate of redirecting a significant portion of eCommerce
traffic to appropriate local microsites, we faced a steep challenge in
maintaining eCommerce traffic numbers and undertook a website
usability study to determine how to optimize the eCommerce site
experience.
Based on the results of the study, we unified the ecommerce site
under one standard site experience that would be easily accessible
across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.
10Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
New ecommerce site design: The results were dramatic: eCommerce traffic grew 31% while online
purchases increased 7%. This spoke very directly to the growing
importance of user experience across devices, which must be a
significant part of any SEO campaign.
11Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
ConclusionSo what should retail companies with online and franchise presences
take away from our campaigns with Relax The Back? We think there
are four main themes that stand out:
- Importance of user experience across devices. For both eCommerce and franchise sites, the buying process has become increasingly spread out over stages that correlate to devices. An optimized user experience across devices must be implemented. At the heart of this is a cohesive website with helpful, relevant content and a clean navigation structure.
- Importance of campaign structure. Splitting out accounts based on differing eCommerce and franchise goals is essential. Each account can be cleanly structured for optimization toward those goals, and other accounts can be created to test products that need further analysis.
- Use of proxy metrics can provide measurable data. Franchises must be able to translate non-digital events into actionable data to optimize campaigns. The use of proxy metrics to approximate in-store actions is, although imperfect, an essential directional strategy.
- Optimized product mix. Consumer behavior and company strategy (e.g. on-site upsells) should help determine the mix of products emphasized in eCommerce and franchise accounts.
12Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
About the AuthorsLeslie To is a Sr. SEO Account Manager at 3Q Digital. She began her
digital marketing career in 2011 at iSearchMedia, which merged with
3Q Digital in March 2014. Leslie has worked with social media market-
ing, content marketing, and analytics along with her focus on SEO. She
graduated from UC-Berkeley in Media Studies and Psychology.
Caitlin Halpert is a Sr. SEM Account Manager at 3Q Digital. She has
worked in digital marketing since 2011 and held positions at Dealer.
com and iSearchMedia before iSM merged with the 3Q team in March
2014. Caitlin graduated from Dartmouth College and is a native of
Vermont.
13Solve Retail’s Digital Marketing Dilemma, How to Boost Foot Traffic and Online Sales
About 3Q3Q Digital believes clients deserve three things from a digital
marketing agency: passionate service and complete transparency
(EQ); channel-specific intelligence and knowledge (IQ) to develop new
strategies as digital marketing evolves; and rock-solid execution (XQ)
to ensure optimization of every campaign.
The company developed these beliefs as PPC Associates (2008-2013),
which made its mark as a pioneering, results-oriented SEM agency
before expanding to offer best-in-class services in display advertising,
social media advertising, mobile advertising, video advertising, and
SEO. 3Q Digital works with some of today’s fastest-growing clients,
including GoPro, Square, California Closets, RelaxTheBack,
SurveyMonkey, Fitbit, and Eventbrite.
If you’re interested in learning more about 3Q Digital’s services, please
call us at 650 539-4625 or visit http://www.3QDigital.com/contact/.
3Q Digital is based in Silicon Valley and has offices in San Francisco,
Chicago, San Diego, and Burlington, VT.
CALL US @ 650.539.4124 EMAIL US AT [email protected]
REACH OUT ON 3QDIGITAL.COM/CONTACT/
FOLLOW US @3QDIGITAL
For more information on how 3Q Digital can help your marketing campaigns: